Currently available illuminators (ex.—laser systems; lasers) utilized in conjunction with inspection systems (ex.—semiconductor wafer inspection systems and photomask inspection systems) typically handle residual light from frequency conversion processes by sending the residual light into an absorbing medium or beam dump. These currently implemented laser systems may experience problems such as: excess generated heat, excess scattered light and photocontamination, which may compromise stability and performance of the laser systems.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a beam dump that would not increase the temperature of the laser, would have acceptably low levels of scattered light, would have minimum photocontamination, would be low cost and would be small in size.